Europe Is the Fastest-warming Continent and This Brutal Heatwave Shows What That Means

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By Tudor Tarita, ZME Science. 

Excerpt: Europe’s summer has arrived early, and it has arrived hard. Across the continent, a dangerous heatwave has closed schools, strained power grids, slowed trains, and pushed authorities to issue the highest health alerts. France recorded its hottest day ever.... Italy placed major cities under red alert warnings. Spain topped 44° Celsius while Britain, where there’s barely any households with air conditioning, braced for temperatures near 40°. Europe is warming faster than any other continent, and this recent heatwave came as a shocking reminder of the fact. ...The planet is about 1.4° Celsius warmer than it was before the industrial era. Europe is about 2.4° hotter, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. One reason is the continent’s geography. Land heats faster than ocean, and Europe is mostly land. ...Europe also stretches into the Arctic, which is warming even faster. As snow and ice melt, they expose darker land and ocean. Those darker surfaces absorb more sunlight, which adds more heat and melts more ice. ...Cleaner air has ironically made things worse from a warming standpoint. ....aerosols also reflect sunlight and help brighten clouds. With fewer of them, more sunlight reaches and heats the ground.... 


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